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“The truth is kind of a dark thing”

Tortured liberal Robert Huber writes on the race-crushed culture of Philadelphia (via Sailer), vividly describing people psychological broken and warped by fear — the author, of course, among them.

I yearn for much more: that I could feel the freedom to speak to my African-American neighbors about, say, not only my concerns for my son’s safety living around Temple, but how the inner city needs to get its act together. That I could take the leap of talking about something that might seem to be about race with black people.

I wouldn’t do that, though, because it feels too risky. …

But this is how I see it: We need to bridge the conversational divide so that there are no longer two private dialogues in Philadelphia — white people talking to other whites, and black people to blacks — but a city in which it is okay to speak openly about race. That feels like a lot to ask, a leap of faith for everyone. It also seems like the only place to go, the necessary next step.

Meanwhile, when I drive through North Philly to visit my son, I continue to feel both profoundly sad and a blind desire to escape.

ADDED: Not a tortured white liberal. “Both the Progressives at the beginning of the 20th century and the liberals at the end started from the same false premise — namely, that there is something unusual about different racial and ethnic groups having different achievements.”

37 Responses to this entry

David Says:

I’m struck by one thing above, in your post: Huber is allowed to say that, he says it, and then, disingenuously, asks “am I allowed to even say that?” This tortured rhetoric is fascinating, in large part because yes he says it (well, he writes it because, presumably, he’s afraid to say it with a black person within earshot), it’s online (for crying out loud, as they say), and though he’s roundly scolded by his liberal media journo peers for being racist for saying it, he says it, yes indeed he does. It seems the ongoing, ahem, reaction to the bottomless charge of racism and its ability to elicit–by torture, to be sure!–endless confessions of liberal guilt is itself a tortured thing, perhaps even more tortured than the poor middle-class middle-aged liberal wrestling with his resentments and fears and projections deep inside the labyrinth-complex of American race (un)consciousness (yet, it would also seem, unable to really ask his son why he’s apparently all right living in the midst of this awful urban jungle; I have a hunch his son might not have the same problem talking about race with black people, at least not black peers).

I, quite the white guy, by the way, felt far more comfortable going to Kansas City public schools that were 80% black and living in East Harlem as a distinct minority and so on (US Virgin Islands, pre-gentrification Brooklyn) than I’ve ever felt in the American sticks and suburbs among what middle-to-upper-class white Americans so affectionately term “white trash”… the meth-and-booze addled denizens of the US Midwest (enough run around to make it all too easy to characterize an entire region by evoking their profiles) always seemed to regard me–an urban white college-educated “liberal”–with more hostility and suspicion than did any of the black people I went to school with, worked with, etc. And this, despite my sharing a healthy chunk of Anglo and Germanic DNA with the good people of mid-western America’s small towns, trailer parks, and decaying suburban culs-de-sac (you want hopelessness?). This is merely testimony, not theory, not a claim to anything, really, other than feeling secure in rejecting the racially anxious drift of so much of what I’m reading as I get to know something of the racial politics (posturing) of certain of the linked-to-community of hereabouts (and no doubt I’m getting more than something wrong, since I only just recently came to know the new reaction & HBD folks existed [I wonder: Am I allowed to say even that?]).

I, quite the white guy, by the way, felt far more comfortable going to Kansas City public schools that were 80% black

Someone has to do it, so here we go . . .

Your personal anecdote is irrelevant. The implicit question here is: Are black communities more crime-ridden than white communities? Another way to phrase it: Do blacks commit more crimes than whites? This is an empirical question, for which there are empirical answers. Do we really need to re-hash this, David? Apparently so. From the DOJ:

In 2010, there were 1,394,425 felonies and misdemeanors; black constituted 201,375 of the offenders. Blacks are 6% of CA’s population. They are 14% of its overall crime offenders. They made up 24% of the homicide offenders; 22% of the rape offenders; 19% of assault offenders; and 20% of theft offenders. Whites, by comparison, were seriously under-represented in these categories (e.g., whites were 19% of homicide offenders, though they comprise ~50% of the population).

What will it take for you to admit these statistics? Even if I were to admit that police profiling plays into them, it still wouldn’t account for most of the serious population/offender mismatches. Unless you enter the realm of the seriously conspiratorial.

Statistics play out in reality in many subjective ways. But the drift of the subjective is toward a general consensus with the statistics . . . hence the “racially anxious drift.” For every one of your anecdotes there will be twenty that bend the other way. What else would you expect based on the stats, especially in the black/white borderlands of the south and midwest?

Is the anxiety warranted? That’s not the right question to ask. I invite you to read our host’s other blog to get an idea of what’s more interesting about all of this.

On your initial point (an important, and ultimately quite subtle one IMHO), how about:
A child sneaks a cookie, is discovered, severely scolded by his parents, and begins weeping. Was he allowed to steal the cookie? No, definitely not, he was shouted at, wasn’t he? Now he’s weeping, apologizing pathetically, and promising never to do it again.
You respond: But he did it! Of course he was allowed … Do you really find that argument compelling? (And yes, I do think tortured liberals have been made into sniveling little children — that’s what the post is about.)

“Look, I’m not an Xist. You know that, you know me, you know I’m not an Xist. In fact, I’m a good, prominent anti-Xist, just like you! But, you know, there are some things about X – non Xist things, I assure you – that are not strictly about identifying and condemning Xism, and that I think are important parts of reality. They influence our choices and dramatically affect our major decisions and the way we actually live our lives. In fact, everybody knows this. In private conversations where they feel safe, they admit it. But it’s become a dangerous taboo, and that’s always a shame.

“We’re all terrified of talking openly about X in public with attribution to our real identifies because we’re frightened that people – who seem to base their whole lives around finding Xists and Xism under every rock they turn over, will falsely accuse us of Xism. That other people will become aware of the story through these erroneous rumors of Xism, and not understand we’re not Xists, and ruin our reputations. We’ve all seen this happen to a few innocent people. They cannot successfully defend themselves against their accusers, no matter how innocent of Xism they may be.

“Eventually they, and their employers, get hounded so much they lose their jobs. Do you have any idea how important it is to preserve a perfectly anti-Xist reputation to get or keep a good job in this society? Do you have any idea how important employment is in our economy? To be publically labelled an Xist and get fired for it and have little prospect of ever getting a god job ever again is perhaps one of the worst things that can happen in a modern life – especially when you’ve got a family who depends on your income. It is an utterly terrifying prospect for most people. It’s almost as if the whole point of these rabid anti-Xists is to prevent any discussion of X at all, no matter how honest, sincere, and good-hearrted.

“So, please, please don’t take this the wrong way. But let me talk about X for a minute in a non Xist way…”

Proceeds to get accused of Xism and hounded into infamy and unemployment. Many like-minded watch, appalled, but are equally terrified of rising to a defense. Or blame the author for being so stupid and offensive.

And it’s true, what the anti-Xists really want is for it to be impossible for anyone but them to talk about X is any way other than the way they want to talk about it. They want it to be mandatory to ignore reality.

When the EEOC says you must hire criminal minorities, they want you to ignore reality. When Ta-Nahesi Coates wants the minority workers at Manhattan’s Milano Market to stop suspecting minorities of shoplifting, he wants them to ignore their own knowledge and experience. It turns out there are two visions of the “colorblind society” depending on what you mean by “blind”.

I don’t think your analogy captures the rightly-identified subtlety of David’s point. The article wasn’t censored, it’s not being regarded as a mistake that slipped past the editors, it has a robust comment section, supporters and sympathizers included, and has been linked by numerous liberal and conservative political and news publications. In addition, he has not expressed an apologetic attitude, only fear about political correctness drawing undue backlash. No figure of legal or political authority has demanded punishment, leaving the “parents” in this situation the many anonymous commenters and few columnists who have responded, and the force of the alleged prohibition the fact that those who express disagreement outnumber those who express sympathy (though by how much doesn’t warrant being taken for granted)- hardly the “comprehensive thought control” worthy of the Cathedral.

Whether the mostly impotent backlash he receives qualifies as political correctness gone mad depends on the veracity of his claims. I’ll deal only with the comically Spivakian question “can the fearful white speak?” Powerful figures take an openly “Huberian” attitude towards African Americans all the time- see literally every, single speech Obama has give to a Black audience, in which the theme of “getting your act together” (as opposed to waiting for government assistance or bemoaning white racism) is the single most emphasized element, in contrast to his relationship with any other constituency. Prominent politicians, from presidential candidates to senators to governors, make explicit remarks about racial difference all the time, for better or for worse, and at this point, Huberianism is a key part of the Republican approach to Black people. Despite hitting a low, Fox News is still the single most-watched news network in the country, and not by negligible margins- on any given day, you’d have to add up the ratings of all its competing networks (the allegedly hegemonic “liberal” news media) to arrive at comparable or not-much-larger numbers- and their prime time shows routinely run stories of a Huberian stripe without losing ratings or facing any real punishment (unless, again, you consider oppositional Facebook comments, blog entries, and opinion pieces punishment or serious enforcement.) Only a few of these people eventually end up stepping down or experiencing serious ramifications due to the backlash. Indeed, unanswered, faux-outraged calls for resignation (from all political coordinates) are as ubiquitous as inane cat memes and celebrity stories.

Unfortunately, this is just a symptom of a larger issue, which is that the complexity of American racial dynamics is rarely represented effectively, and neither Moldbug nor the HBD zealots seem particularly invested in approximating veracity on the subject.

Or this one, in which the “get your act together” meme is still far and away from anything Bill Cosby ever said (and, yes, Cosby was certainly pilloried for his poundcake speech; and, yes, he still gives versions of it; but, no, I can’t remember the last time that message was discussed seriously in the media; who’s Bill Cosby?; he’s that crazy black conservative like Herman Cain.)

First, critiques of the Cathedral and its narratives on anything can only be critiqued in certain venues (i.e., in venues already hostile–wittingly or not–to the Cathedral, or at least hostile to certain aspects of it). I can assure you that, in academia, people have lost and do lose employment (or opportunities to move up) if they don’t toe the line. Or they go work for one of the anti-Cathedral venues.

However, as our host has implied elsewhere, anti-Cathedral venues (and even mild anti-Cathedral articles like the one we’re talking about here) will always be “crackerized” and thus tolerated to some extent because they are now neutralized and safely outside the approved discourse. Huber’s article is now officially racist; it’s petty white man whining, which in and of itself is racist; whenever someone else espouses its ideas (even if they are better supported), that person will be waved off because “that’s just racist Huberism.” Huber may as well join some libertarian think tank. He is now ‘outside.’ Ritual shunning has begun.

In the distant past, the Cathedral (Rome) would stamp out heretics in a more confrontational and violent way. The seeds of the Reformation had been planted centuries before Luther, but anti-Cathedral venues weren’t tolerated, and anyway, it was much harder for ideas to circulate beyond an individual monastery’s walls.

Today, the Cathedral can’t go around burning people at the stake. (They can haul them before inquisitions, as happened to a colleague who spoke out of turn about related issues.) But in general, the control of anti-Cathedral ideas or venues is done by marking these venues and ideas as ‘outside.’ Huber is just a few short articles away from Bob Jones University status. Do reactionary ideas float around inside Bob Jones University? Sure they do. The Cathedral allows it because the ideas are neutralized there, just as Huber’s article is in the process of being neutered .

It’s not a debate between equals, as you seem to want to imply. Huber (like Bob Jones University) was a priori going to lose the debate. From here on, let’s track his career and see what happens. Will he be Derby-shired eventually? If not, it’s because he never writes an article like this again.

Now, I’m willing to admit that the Cathedral is not as All Powerful as Moldbug wants it to be. Wherever reactionary ideas make their way and circulate in discourse outside the reacto-sphere, that’s proof that the Cathedral can’t control everything.

But both you and David seem to believe (let me know if I’m reading you incorrectly) that the existence of discourse against Cathedral Narratives is proof that Moldbug and others have highly exaggerated the Cathedral’s power. I’ll buy this to a certain extent. However, as I said, the Cathedral’s workers do the controlling by crackerizing or neutralizing the discourse on the ground. Outright censorship isn’t needed, and would today be counter-productive (outright censorship might make people sit up and really take notice; forbidden fruit is seductive). Much more effective to call it ‘racist’ and brush it aside as nothing.

None of us are above hyperbole, so I cannot say that Moldbug and others haven’t been prone to exaggerate the Cathedral’s power. Obviously, no earthly power whatsoever is absolute. Moreover, how coordinated can you expect a fundamentally decentralized and non-conspiratorial meme-centric ideology to be? Its “jack boots”, to the extent the Cathedral has them at all, are the Dahlit and Helot classes, which do not work in anything close to centrally commanded way (they are in fact very unreliable allies, but what’re ya gonna do when your a group of Sunday School teachers?).

The great power of the Cathedral may, I think, be likened more to the wind and water erosion of the Grand Canyon. Certainly, great cataclysms in the past have done much of the work of washing cubic miles of Arizona landscape into the Gulf of Mexico. But on most days it doesn’t really look all that powerful and on most days the high desert winds and the Colorado river wash out only perhaps a few score of cubic yards. It differs from the great cataclysmic power only in degree, and not in type. Thus so with the Cathedral, entropy increases monotonically. Yet on most days it is barely noticable to anyone not watching very carefully. But as with the Grand Canyon, this does not mean it is not an awesome power.

Liberals have every reason to downplay the sheer vindictive Lysenkoism that still dominates public conversation in regards to this topic, especially in areas of Cathedral influence (i.e. real social power — the media, academy, and law). The Linda S. Gottfredson case illustrates the pattern of effective harassment and intimidation very clearly. (Proxy issues prevent me from linking to the most informative article directly, but it’s easy to find: ‘Lessons in academic freedom as lived experience’ here.)

As for Huber, operating at a far shallower level of reality than Gottfredson (basically social gossip journalism) — I’m expecting theatrical self-flagellation, but the stigma will be indelible. Insofar as they care, Blacks will probably forgive him, if he seems to have been genuinely ‘born again’ through ecstasies of guilt. White liberals never will.

Right. The Cathedral doesn’t bother to operate at certain scales directly; its unwitting catachumens take care of things via ritual shunning or self-flagellation.

I’ll admit to our skeptics that people who rarely come into direct contact with the Cathedral’s organs (especially law and academia) might not appreciate the extent to which You Just Don’t Say Certain Things.

The far Left of contemporary academia is always the next generation’s center left, and the subsequent generation’s centrism . . . this is the direct result of Not Being Allowed To Say Certain Things (or Not Taking Certain Things Seriously). Because the things unsaid would move us toward reaction.

Forget the black/white race issue for a minute. Do you think any political party could ever win by running on a platform of, say, isolationism? Or by incentivizing eugenic breeding? Or by giving the vote only to individuals who cross a certain property or salary threshold? At different points in history, these were legitimate positions that equals could debate in public (my own institution taught eugenics courses as late as 1920). Now they just sound loony.

So, let me know when CNN or Yale University hosts a round-table discussion about “The Risks and Rewards of Eugenics” or “Should Renters Be Allowed to Vote?” or “Exploring Alternatives to Democracy.” Then I’ll be willing to admit that perhaps the reacto-sphere is just overdramatic.

Let me know why we should continue caring about CNN or Yale. Is there anything tangible remaining for which they remain gatekeepers, besides cultural influence? Once we stop agreeing that CNN and Yale are the top voices in their fields, and really mean it, that is when the reaction will really start to gain steam.

As for those discussion topics, they may not occur at CNN or Yale, but I assure you that they happen in media and in educational contexts. They may not be happening in Cathedral-approved spaces, but that doesn’t matter. The cultural zeitgeist isn’t the nightly news anymore, it’s facebook and twitter, and both of these move at faster than the speed of meaningless cultural commentators on cable TV (unless they have a gaffe up on YouTube.)

You need to take more heart; the Cathedral is doomed to suffer the demographic fate it chose 60 years ago. They are certainly on top of the world right now, having delivered the coup de grâce to Arlington through sequestration. However, this will end up a Pyrrhic victory. Our problem today is that we tend to only think about t=0 (i.e. the present), but true reactionaries must have the long view. Once the baby boomers pass on from power and relevance, the bastions of the Cathedral will have utterly spent themselves, and the new generation will have no love or reverence or interest in them.

The MTV Generation is approaching 50. 20 year olds will never care about the Cathedral media megaliths, their allegiances will be to Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Unless CNN and Facebook merge, no one will care in 50 years. I plan to be alive in 50 years. I think our side can win by then. Even if only my children can really enjoy it, that sounds alright to me.

their allegiances will be to Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Each of whom are Cathedral outposts and stand to be likely Cathedral megaliths for the next generation.

The more noise there is, the louder and more clear the Cathedral’s message will be. The Revolution wasn’t (as was predicted) televised. It didn’t need to be. But the Reaction will have to be televised.

You cannot solve anarchy by more anarchy. No doubt, it is occasionally inconvenient for certain insufficiently anarchical anarchists (who surely deserve whatever they get), but this is no way to restore order.

Nick B. Steves Reply:March 10th, 2013 at 7:16 pm

Ooh… and I missed another irony…

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

…each of whom hire disproportionately from Yale and her peers, the vast majority of which young professionals consider the most trusted name in news to be nothing but goodness and honest light.

You see change and think, like a hopeful person naturally ought , “Maybe things’ll be better”. But the Cathedral has one constant: change, and it is exceedingly rare for it to ever be for the better.

It seems as tho’ the Cathedral is high pass filter, a differentiator. The reaction is a single pole integrator.

I don’t know that I necessarily accept that Google, et al. are full-fledged members of the Cathedral. Most educated people could tell you exactly what the New York Times, or CNN, or the Yale faculty believe on most issues, because they will line up exactly with the standard Cathedral ideology. Could you say that same about Facebook? Could you guess Facebook’s stance on, say, immigration amnesty, just because of who they are? You could assume standard Cathedral politics down the line, but how do you know?

Maybe I am just being naively hopeful, but there is a distinction to me between content suppliers (CNN, NYT, Yale classes) and content enablers (Google, Facebook, Apple). Media members and academics are fundamentally different from techies and project managers (mainly because, for the latter set, results actually matter), and techies are natural-born reactionaries. Even if Facebook hires mainly Ivy Leaguers, I assure you that technical minded HYPers are not interchangeable with HYP liberal arts majors. Once the talented techies realize that going into the Ivy League is no longer the only path to success, the hiring patterns will change as well. If you can program and have the entrepreneurial spirit at 18, why the hell would you waste 4 years in New Haven?

The US corporate commitment to diversity and inclusion has absolutely nothing to do with the type of products or services they create; but only with the type of creatures such corporations are: larger than average political animals in an ecosystem where politics is the only hard currency. I work for a major global telecom provider. What could service provider telecom equipment possibly have to do with the shibboleth of diversity? I assure my company publishes pages just as inane as those presented by the rest. My God, don’t people just want to make money? Of course they do. And the way you make money is you make nice with the King and his Cathedral Advisors.

The only thing remarkable about the Corporate Worlds’ commitment to Diversity and Inclusion and Prancing Unicorns Farting Faerie Dust our of Their Arses is its droning… preaching… dull… monotonic landscape; a landscape not at all unlike the boring regularity of Cathedral Universities’ Humanities departments. This similarity is not an accident.

“… Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter.” — Horribly fascinating. It certainly looks as if business proximity to the Cathedral (cultural control) very effectively cathedralizes. (Facebook is my personal candidate for most disgusting corporation ever.) Since ‘proximity to the machinery of cultural control’ translates quite quickly, and ever more rapidly, into proximity to Cyberspace — itself a metaphysically-intriguing notion — a post on the subject is clearly called for. It could be a spectacularly depressing one.

(The ‘disgust’ topic has been pursued doggedly by Federico for a while now. I’m hooked, having long recognized that the gut-twisting nauseous rage inspired by inflationary macro-economics cannot be entirely reduced to logical dissatisfaction.)

I appreciate what you’re trying to say, and I do want to believe it: that Google crafts diversity statements and strikes other Cathedral poses as an outward appeasement to the roving eyes of the watchers, while in the halls and cubicles on the ground stalks an unwitting Reaction, in practice if not in thought. The Cathedralspeak pumped from the PR and HR departments is not, in fact, pious and believing Cathedralspeak (because, as you point out, things simply need to get done in certain sectors) but rather a swath of sheep’s blood painted across the door so that the Angel of Diversity passes over (Diversity is Here! No Need to Look Closer!) . . . while inside, members of a certain demographic read Moldbug and Urban Future on their lunch breaks–or, at least, do their work without caring about the Cathedral at all, predisposed to mock it if anything.

I just don’t know.

I can’t help thinking here about the American Navy’s recent push to recruit non-white SEALs.

Beautiful Cathedralspeak! On one hand, at least the Navy gives a tangible, material reason for wanting diversity: it’s easier to infiltrate certain parts of the world if your forces are black and brown. On the other hand, I imagine that, in this case, you’re right about the existence of a major difference between the PR Cathedralspeak on display in the article and the discourse about it amongst the SEALs themselves. High intelligence and discipline are utterly necessary to be a SEAL; otherwise, people die. Cathedralspeak notwithstanding, such an organization simply wouldn’t really make substantial changes in order to get more non-whites in the ranks. People Who Matter in the organization wouldn’t stand for it. (Or maybe I, too, am being optimistic here.)

But we’ll see. Wouldn’t that be something, though, if we start hearing about the Navy covertly–err–pushing certain recruits through its rigorous SEAL training?

Hoping for ‘fairness’ is just stupid, but it’s easy to see the way that enraged polarization undermines calm appreciation, in both directions. On the reactionary side, things easily degenerate into oafish black-bashing, whilst among white liberals, the basic decency of much HBD-inspired thinking is simply unthinkable.
Thomas Sowell made the intriguing suggestion (in Race and Culture, I think) that African ancestry statistically predicts a superior capability for improvisation (evidenced in music, sports, and oratory). Google the hook phrase “To be an outstanding basketball player means to out-think opponents consistently in these split-second decisions under stress” and only one source comes up, repeatedly — ‘evil racist’ Steve Sailer. He’s the only person on the planet who seems to be stubbornly seeking to draw attention to areas of black genetic advantage in cognitive performance. This quote is extremely interesting:

… black basketball players tend to be able to not only jump higher than whites, but also outthink them during the flow of the game. As Thomas Sowell notes, “To be an outstanding basketball player means to out-think opponents consistently in these split-second decisions under stress.” Beyond basketball, these black cerebral superiorities in “real time” responsiveness also contribute to black dominance in jazz, running with the football, rap, dance, trash talking, preaching, and oratory. Perhaps, blacks could better exploit these skills, along with their masculine charisma, in the corporate arena by focusing on jobs like salesman, motivational speaker, and headhunter.

The implication is that an important dimension of creativity is positively correlated with heightened time-preference, and thus counter-correlated to the cluster of g-carried traits at the East Asian end of the (‘evil racist’) r/K selection spectrum. Why isn’t anybody seriously looking at this — in relation, for instance, to Chinese anxieties about their native creativity deficit? The answer is obvious, and sad.

I agree strongly with the sentiment in this post. I see no reason why diversity*, HBD, and reaction cannot mutually coexist. However, I also understand and respect ethnic nationalists, and my only reply to them is that ethnic nationalism cannot survive democracy any more than a republicanism can. “One man, one vote” invariably leads to the factioning of the populace over political differences, rather than (comm)unity along ethnic or patriotic lines. Reactionary ethnostates and reactionary multiethnic (but unicultural) states could certainly be allies.

*Diversity defined as “allow the most talented to rise regardless of race/sex/orientation/etc.” not as “make sure we have one of each of the grab bag of identities so as to be as inoffensive and democratic as possible”.

Sure, and one could go still further: try everything (within minimal Patchwork rules). Why not a few small communist ‘utopias’? They’d divert progressive energy into ‘building’ something of its own (and reaping its own consequences), rather than plugging dysfunction into social systems that might otherwise have some real chance of working.

The more real diversity the better, including diversity between different visions of diversity. Political disintegration is the only way to go, once it is realized that ruling over the reluctant is the royal road to disaster.

Leaving aside the hyperbole, it isn’t difficult to see how tech companies could “value” diversity while using their drawing power to get the best talent of various ethnic backgrounds, without having to sacrifice standards. (This same luxury isn’t available to smaller firms, whose “diversity” hires write poor code for cheap.) Given the current geopolitical circumstances, Microsoft or Facebook is much more likely to feel the sting of substandard employees than is the US Navy.

I’m not suggesting that there’s a hidden reactionary brain trust ready to strike when no one expects it. What I am saying is that the environment inside big tech companies is such where results are valued much more in the current Cathedral organizations. It’s removal from consequences that allows lies to remain and fester, and tech companies don’t have the luxury. These are organizations made up of smart, analytic thinkers, who can easily understand the intellectual underpinnings of reaction. The dangers and failures of popular sovereignty are plainly in front of us. That technological advances have conspired to save us temporarily does not guarantee future innovations to save our asses again.

It is absolutely true that you’ll find no more skeptical audience to Cathedral Orthodoxy than in the lower rungs of hi-tech corporations. This is largely libertarian in nature–the smart wishing the world would be governed for the benefit of smart people (that is to say lightly governed).

But there are two strikes (at least) against this impulse ever taking over any large hi-tech corporation:

1) the libertarian impulses are a mile wide but an inch deep; vague senses of self-interest are inherently noisy and do not add up coherently–certainly not enough to imply nascent political power vis-a-vis the Cathedralized sect. I’ve known scores of engineers with libertarian sympathies, only one was an actual libertarian party member.

2) with large corporations, there is a turd-tinged translucent ceiling for hi-skill/hi-tech employees… and in order to break through it you have to recite the various shibboleths and get on the management (aka., political) track. Sure you could game the system, but it is hard for the skeptical engineer to maintain a straight face when reciting bullshit, meeting after bullshit meeting, year after bullshit year. And he is pretty well compensated anyway, so most don’t bother. The true believer (in bullshit) is a much better candidate for executive “leadership”. Ironically he (or surprisingly often she) probably wasn’t that strong on the “technical side” anyway.

Of course, if the racial and sexual outcome-blind, libertarian, pure money making hi-tech corporate machine ever did come to exist… most of their customers would probably find a way to find fault and drive them out of business anyway. (Like Rhodesia for LLCs.)

I’m not sure what I want it to say either. Engineers are quite opinionated about politics, but not especially political; nearly unanimous in decrying how screwed up things are, but unwilling to lend time, talent, or treasure to fixing them. This I find in their favor.

I would respond that “mile wide but inch deep” support is all the reaction really needs from the average person. We aren’t democracy, so we don’t require deep commitment from our boots on the ground. As long as the boots on the ground aren’t actively revolting, their support is otherwise not required. I’d almost rather them not be in the LP, cause that implies a certain egoistic investment in the current system.

I would also suggest that some of the techies you describe who take the “red pill” over in that part of the Rightosphere will be more likely to look for ways to take the executive track without kowtowing to Progressive Orthodoxy. Game works in meeting rooms and board rooms, too.

Patchwork rules, or reactionary foreign policy, are an absolute requirement for reaction to survive. Our foreign policy model must be one of unquestioned mutual sovereignty (i.e. no meddling). The UN asking member nations to ratify treaties on human rights, women’s rights, etc. is the epitome of Cathedral idealist foreign policy, making the world safe for puppies, unicorns, and Social Justice. However, in a sane world, the international organization would be utterly agnostic towards each member nation’s internal policies. A Reactionary UN would only act once member nations attacked each other, or perhaps if invited by the recognized sovereign. The principle of “nation as single actor” applies here. Reactionary UN would leave human rights campaigning to groups like Amnesty International. Without any enforcement mechanism, the Cathedral UN is basically asking nations “pretty please” to respect human rights anyway.

This whole topic (Patchwork rules) is hugely important — I think it exceeds the reasonable prospects of this comment thread. What makes it deliciously quaggy is that it has a regressive quality, familiar to the turtles-all-the-way-down puzzles familiar from cosmo-theology. Quandaries pushed up from the national state level (catallaxy, constitutionalism …) get reproduced at the level of inter-state relations — but I’m assuming even the most ardent royalist is averse to the idea of a World King. One response is to suspect that difficulties are being exposed which are already latent in the monarchical ‘solution’ lower down. A national monarchy only works because the patchwork absorbs and annuls its tyrannical potential, by holding open the machinery of Exit. Thus, the problem of binding power is displaced by any localized royalism, but it is not actually resolved, due to the unprocessed assumptions it must make about the enveloping (global) context. Switched around, we might ask: why wouldn’t a solution that works at the Patchwork level — i.e. some kind of dynamic pluralism — be equally operable at the ‘subordinate’ or national level? If a Patchwork can be operationalized, why do we need states (or local power monopolies)? In other words, does the Patchwork problem tend ultimately to anarcho-capitalist resolution?